


a winter night's dream

by lastwingedthing



Category: Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:30:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastwingedthing/pseuds/lastwingedthing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Polly and Tom are going nowhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a winter night's dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iphianassa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphianassa/gifts).



> The quote at the beginning of Polly's letter is from the movie version of The Last Unicorn, which came out in 1982; Fire & Hemlock was published in 1985, so Polly could have seen it. I like to think it would be her kind of fairy tale.

Alone in her room, Polly switches off the electric light and opens her curtains to the fierce black night outside. The sky is cloudless; it’s bitterly cold. Past her window there are only streetlights, and a few pale stars.

The lamp over her desk has a softer glow to it, warm and golden, and when she presses the switch it fills her cluttered room with a magical light. _Nowhere light_ , she whispers to herself, and picks up her pen. Its weight in her hand is like a hero’s axe, or a magic umbrella with white and green triangles, wrapping her in fierce biscuit-scented love.

Polly is loved.

Happiness the warm colour of the lamplight fills her and spills over to cover the room.

***

 _‘There are no happy endings,’_ Polly writes carefully, ‘ _because nothing ever ends.’ I am beginning to understand that now. There is truth in every story._

 _We’ve won, but it’s so far from being over. The story just keeps on going. We have so much more to do. You’ll have recording sessions and concerts and the quartet to keep up with…_

 _…I think I have decided what I am going to do with my life, after I get my degree. I only have two years left of university, after all._

 _Tom, I’m going to be a writer. I’m going to tell stories, true stories. About Hero, and Tan Coul, and all the rest. Before I remembered again – I would have just married Seb, because I couldn’t imagine anything better. Because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, I had no idea what_ I _wanted, at all. I couldn’t_ remember. _But now I do. This is what I want, Tom._

 _And of course, there will be other people who need to hear what we know._

 _We will be able to meet nowhere again. And I think that writing like this will help me to get there more often, to be there with you. You know I’d rather be nowhere with you than anywhere else in the world…_

Polly pauses. The pen tip rests gently against the page; she is blushing. But she’s learnt now not to let embarrassment have any power over her.

 _I love you, Tom._

 _Polly_

***

It snows a few times, that long bitter January. More often it’s just wet and cold; the thermometer hovers constantly just above freezing point. Icy, sleety rain falls day after day.

Fiona catches cold three times, and even indoors Polly’s lectures are half-empty and full of coughing, sneezing students well-muffled in coats and thick scarves. Polly wanders through it all in a dream.

Grey stone towers stand upright against the grey sky, and always there are bells, and quiet winter gardens. Oxford, with all its tutorials and stuffy dons and stuffier undergraduates like hundreds of arrogant self-assured Sebs, is nevertheless full of _nowhere_ in the places Polly least expects it, in unexpected turnings or little corners that take her breath away with their beauty.

If she had any room left in her for more rage than she already feels, she would want to kill Laurel for this. For the way she spent a year blind to all of this wonder around her. For four years without any magic in them at all.

It is _nowhere_ where Polly meets Tom these days, in stone alcoves carved with tiny animal faces, under winter-bare trees. Four or five times that term he comes to her, showing up like magic, like another dream. Like she’d found Tom in three cities that December, showing up unexpected and unannounced at one concert after another. The magic he makes there with the rest of the quartet is another kind of dream.

Dreams, she knows know, are sometimes real. And _Tom_ is real.

The hero comes for Hero, and takes her breath away.

In those dim-lit shadowed places she kisses him deep and wet and wanting, and that takes her breath away too. That she can possibly feel this much hunger, this much want. It is another universe from the carefully-hidden boredom of a kiss from Seb; worlds away from the brief casual pleasure of kissing a boy from school, even one like Leslie.

Love means desire. She is learning that now. Polly can want, Polly can _take_.

Hasn’t she already helped to steal Tom away, because she could not bear life without him?

***

It is a long, dark January, but Polly does not always have to spend her nights alone.

“I’ve always loved your hair,” Tom says groaning, against her mouth. His hands are tangled in it, wrapped round in fine fair strands. “Polly, Polly…”

Polly kisses him back. Bites him, not gently, on the mouth. “Yes,” she says, in a voice gone rough and low as his own. She’s pressed tightly against him with her back against the wall. A moment ago it was her that had him trapped.

She barely knows what she is doing. His hands are sliding up under her shirt, easing it off her, eager and assured. And then her skirt, _oh_ , she never let things get this far with Seb. But it’s Tom, _Tom_ … She lifts her hands to take his glasses off, and he bites his lip and lets her. So vulnerable under her hands, and no-one else’s. Now he’s naked too.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, Tom, I know.”

They kiss again. His hands are burning on her skin.

“Polly,” he says. His voice is rough, catching in his throat in a way she’s never heard from him before. It thrills her as much as it scares her, to see him this way. “Polly, I never even dared dream of this. Never even dared imagine…”

She takes his hand, so warm against her own. Feels him, all of him, skin and blood and bone.

Feels the strength of him, her True Thomas she saved from a dread fate. The man she’s loved for so many years, even when she didn’t – couldn’t – remember him. She’s loved him so long. How could she possibly condemn him for loving her back?

Polly is in love.

“Shhh. Shhhh, Tom, Tom, Tan Coul. I’m here for you now. We’re both _here_.”

“Here is nowhere,” he says half-laughing, half-sobbing. “ _Polly_ …”

She tugs him forward. They fall down onto her bed together.

***

Afterwards Polly feels sleepy and quiet, all her words gone. She tucks herself closer into Tom’s warmth. Places a kiss on his chest where her mouth is resting, just above his beating heart.

Under the quilt his arms are wrapped tightly, carefully around her. Keeping her warm and safe. _Loved._ It’s a magic, secret place here in this dimness. The wind and the cold rain are beating against the window, outside, where they ought to be. There is nowhere safe from the storm and they have found it, found this quiet perfect space. Polly and Tom, together.

After a long time Polly feels Tom stir against her. “How are you feeling, Polly?” he asks her carefully, as he leans down to press a kiss against her hair.

“Mmm,” she manages, languid, and then she smiles to let everything she’s feeling spill out for him to see.

Tom looks down at her, at her face. “Really?” he manages, a little blush staining his cheekbones.

Her smile widens, catlike, contented. “Oh, _yes_.”

***

Later still she turns again to face him in the circle of his arms. “So, Tan Coul,” she asks, him, teasing. “What happens now?”

He kisses her, not gently, taking his time. “Why, Tan Coul and Hero live happily ever after, of course.”

She smiles at him. “And keep doing _this_.”

“I do hope so,” he says. His smile fades a little. “Hero and Tan Coul… they can’t…”

“They can’t get married, not ever. It would be here now, not nowhere, no escape. I know that, Tom. I don’t really mind.”

He looks at her, steady and serious. His face looks naked, without glasses. As close as this, she knows he can see her, but even the dresser three feet away from him must be nothing but a blur. Her face the only real thing in all the world.

“Do you really not mind? Because I know that _I_ mind it. Even if there is no other way… Polly, I wish…”

Polly half-smiles. “All right then, you win. I _do_ mind, rather a lot. Granny is going to be hurt dreadfully.” She will be, and Polly doesn’t like to think about it. Granny will understand in the end, and perhaps even forgive her, but that only makes it more painful that Polly is going to hurt her this way. “I think I always have known, though. Heroines don’t marry very often. Hero, the other Hero, didn’t.”

Tom smiles at her, that sweet, sad smile. “Yes, I know.”

He kisses her very lightly. And then she’s struck by a sudden thought, and sits up feeling chilled to the bone.

“Tom… I don’t think we ought to have children, either. Not because of the marriage, of course. But… if it were a son…”

She hears Tom suck in a sudden breath, and her heart twists for him and for herself, for this moment of shock and painful understanding.

For a moment, just a moment, she sees what he does: sees the child they might have together, running light-hearted through the room beside them. That blond and smiling boy with her grandfather’s eyes, and a smile like Leslie Piper’s.

She doesn’t need to say Laurel’s name. She won’t say it to Tom, not here, not now.

“All right,” he says slowly. Old pain and sadness in his voice. “Even if we taught him, if we _made_ him understand…”

“She hates us both, now,” Polly says.

He nods. “I know. It wouldn’t be fair, or safe. She doesn’t lose very often.”

Tom meets grief with resignation but she’s always been the angry one. Always been the fighter, and the hero.

“Oh, Tom!” she cries out suddenly, fierce and passionate. “It _isn’t_ fair. If only… I wish…”

Tom holds, safe and tight. “Hero,” he whispers to her, longing. “I wish it could happen too.”

“At least I have you,” she tells him, feeling her words pound within her with their rightness. Feeling herself drowning in ferocious, overwhelming love. “And she won’t have _you_ , not ever again. At least we’ll always have each other.”

It will be enough, it will have to be enough. In this moment Polly cannot imagine doubting. How can there be anything else she needs?

***

It’s that Polly thinks of as she falls asleep, soothed and comforted by the wind outside and by the steady sound of Tom’s breathing. She has this, their love for each other, her knowledge that Tom loves her coming after so long.

That night, still wrapped in his arms, she dreams of two figures walking off to meet the storm together: the tall bookish hero in glasses, and small Hero holding his hand as her long fair hair whips into her face.

They are Tan Coul and Hero together, here in nowhere. Forever.

They’ll never leave.


End file.
